


The Truth

by Izzy_Grinch



Series: Tired and Tamed [2]
Category: Fables (Willingham) - All Media Types, Fables - Willingham, The Wolf Among Us
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Fight Sex, Hurt/Comfort, Love/Hate, M/M, Roughness, dark!Fabletown, fighting each other to help each other, true nature of a beast
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-12
Updated: 2017-06-12
Packaged: 2018-11-13 07:20:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,247
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11179803
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Izzy_Grinch/pseuds/Izzy_Grinch
Summary: He is the only one who doesn't force the Wolf to grovel before the laws of this unfamiliar world of mundies. He is the only one who who doesn't want the Wolf to wear a collar and wag his tail.





	The Truth

**Author's Note:**

  * A translation of [Правда](https://archiveofourown.org/works/8331403) by [Izzy_Grinch](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Izzy_Grinch/pseuds/Izzy_Grinch). 



Bigby is big and bad, and it’s true. There’re even bigger for sure, just watch Gren during the shittiest of his evenings. There’re even worse, just remember the seven dwarves; oh, how ferociously the lousy bastards were biting… And it’s true as well. And nothing stings like the truth. That’s why Gren is drinking himself to death at the “Trip Trap” counter, though it’s another matter he can’t die so easily. That’s why no one mentions the revengeful cap-fanciers anymore and no one asks where they’ve gone.

But Bigby is here and now, and he doesn’t sting, doesn’t hurt − he severs and pulls everyone’s nerves like a blacksmith pulls the red-hot metal into the spokes; provokes with his unworthy existence. Furthermore, he’s a sheriff. How has he even had the gall? Got from the dunghill right into the swill, which is more fetid, more viscid. And the silty swills of the river banks, where he was rolling the stones in his belly, were just fine. Having a crappy day now and then, he remembers that fresh and greasy scent. He always remembers though. And everyone remembers, and everyone knows: a beast. A monster. Wicked, heartless, hungry, cocked, burning inside like Gren after his third glass of booze. But Gren − he’s nobody. Just a thug, too tired of all this fuss. He’s had his gruel, enough and long ago, and he’s faded since then, withered, almost vanished away.

But Bigby − he is a Wolf, and people shiver in fear, and their napes grow cold, and their eyes rush about, and their tongues wamble, numb, while some of them are lashing him with words as if with a whip, and the others are caressing him not to tame − what a hope! − no, but to coax, for the living is much better with just a hand being bitten off rather than an entire head, isn’t it? And so he senses these smells: of dread, disdain, distaste, disgust; and they are as truthful as the things, said aloud: “Get out, Bigby,” or, “You’re not welcome here, Wolf,” or − sometimes, “You’re nicer than you think, Bigby, if only you could show it to those around you…” Yes, Bigby, _show_ them. Hide your fangs, brush you hair, shove the growl back into your throat and, choking on it, get into the human skin, into that leather mask. Deceive them, Bigby, drop by drop decant that blissful light which smolders inside your weary, wild soul. _Change_ yourself, Bigby, you’re not the Wolf anymore, you’re the right hand − though against all common sense − of the law; and they’ve even placed − such an evil joke − the responsibility for Fabletown on you.

Because Fabletown can’t choke on the screams, which tear this place apart at nights; Fabletown can’t lie − those are not lies at all, those are the magical, god darn them, glamour! So grab your beast by the scruff, and tie shut its foamy jaws, and foul its lungs with the smoke of the cheapest, the nastiest cigarettes, and uproot its claws − but bit your tongue, would you _be_ _so kind_ , and don’t howl in pain, Bigby.

And then the calloused palm, having the hangnails and swollen veins, gifted with more strength than it’d ever wish to have, pins him to the wall, like he’s a half-blind, feeble cub, and the voice calls him − invokes him out, into the darkness, to the hunt.

“I know that you’re here, Wolf.”

And if the axe was biting into the shaved head back then − now the teeth are biting into the sinewy neck. And if the body crashed Toad’s rusty jalopy back then − now it’s crashing the Wolf, who’s breaking off the leash, and it’s slamming him harshly, knocking the air from his chest and the stagnant north wind, once constrained and pacified. And not the smile but the grin parts his lips; and the red plaid under his fingers, under his claws isn’t getting more crimson on the ripped shoulders. But the smell, that sticky, bloody stench, flavored with the sweat and strong malt − and sweaty, malty excitement, it awakens the ancient ancestors, the ancient gods, the ancient instincts. And it’s the most healing truth of all the truths Bigby has in his current life, which stands so far from the old fairytales.

The kitchen is a mess. In fact, the whole place is a mess, and it has always been like this here and in Fabletown itself. And day by day from place to place on the streets of his fake world full of fake pseudo-people he chases those who can’t afford any charms, and those who think themselves to be more clever, dexterous and dodgy than the circumstances to wear any guise, and every time they return, and he has to start it all anew − to continue it all again. But within these walls he can stop trying to affix the flaps of ragged wallpapers, or to push the foamy wagging into the gutted armchair − not because they will as well return back to square one, but because here the truth is always accepted and never hid behind some obedient pudency.

The table, placed in the middle of this chaos, seems to throw a challenge, which has already been taken up, more than once; however sometimes the plainest can turn out to be the most indestructible, so the firm wood has only some dark clotted stains and a dozen of tentative furrows on the very edge. The Woodsman is a lazy asshole, it’s true: he’s almost brought his own tools to the hammer, when stumbled upon that oak, hard as iron, stubborn as the wolf’s nature. And after the bedroom windows, patched with newspapers, and the worn out mattress on the floor this table really looks like a fucking piece of art. The true miracles are in the simplest things. Bigby sneers, pinching the splinters from the furrows.

“So, how’re − _ehm_ − you?”

“OK. You?”

“Yup, it’s a’right,” Bigby scratches his stubble noisily to occupy the awkward silence. “Thought you’d croack yesterday when… you know.”

“Eh. Forget it.”

Woody reminds of this table very much. However, all the marks and wounds always erase from him and disappear like the bodies in the damn Witching Well; they are wet at first, glistening damply in the shadows, by the morning they dry out, skin over, the sore scars soften, whiten, and after a day or two you can start all over again with a clean sheet. Their sheet is crumpled, shredded for a three thousand times, and also it seems to have been used as a wrap for some pluck.

“What, you’re making a breakfast here?”

“Just for myself, as always.”

“As always…” Bigby repeats, adjusts his tie and moves to the door, away from the reek of the oil, splashing on the pan.

“Hey, Wolf.”

He catches a giant frozen stake and, fortunately, feels no shade of wanting to taste it; he prefers the hotdogs of mundies, without mustard, spice and shitty jests about dogs. The Woodsman taps himself on the temple.

“A hell of a bruise you have there. I must’ve been too hard on you.”

For a long while Bigby looks at the smashed doorjamb with the dags of fur sticking out  and the slivers scattered around, as he will look later, in his tiny numbered box, at his own beaten face and one eye getting dark blue, because that’s − the only scraps of truth he has now, he is familiar with, he is _accustomed to_.


End file.
